


Now You Did It

by RHGroeninga



Series: Utter Madness [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 11, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, End of the World, Episode: s02e01 In My Time of Dying, Gen, Mystery, No Amara (Supernatural), POV Multiple, Post-Mark of Cain, Post-Season/Series 10, Post-Season/Series 10 AU, Post-Season/Series 10 Finale, Season/Series 11 AU, Time Travel, lore expansion, secret crossover, trigger warnings per chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-11 05:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13517079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RHGroeninga/pseuds/RHGroeninga
Summary: They stopped the Apocalypse. They stopped the second Apocalypse. They stopped the Leviathan threat. They stopped Metatron from taking over Heaven, and Abaddon from taking over Hell. They cured Dean of the Mark of Cain and...Ended the world.





	1. Now You Did It

**Author's Note:**

> Canon up till the very end of season 10. This is basically what I thought was going on at the season 10 finale.
> 
> Secret crossover with other stories in the Utter Madness series, but can be read independently.
> 
> Giliga/Time is my own character, please do not use this character in your fics (at least not without messaging me).

**Now You Did It**

  
  


_The Darkness. The Darkness gathered as a giant cloud of black smoke less than a mile away from where Sam and Dean were standing, rolled outward, towards them, inevitable, swallowing trees, buildings, the very earth they were standing on like an avalanche of nothingness._

_Instinctively, they jumped into the Impala to get the hell out of the way – Dean in the driver's seat, Sam shotgun, as they always did – but they should have known it was useless. As Dean tried to turn, the left-back wheel sank into a pothole and in their last two seconds they watched the Darkness approach. Then the world ended._

\--

"Now you did it. Now you actually did it."

They sat in a nice, soulful bar, with atmospheric light, dark wood floors and furniture and comfortable red leather booths. There was a stage in one corner, and a pool table dominated the center of the room.

"You guys..."

Opposite of them, sat Chuck, shaking his head in disappointment.

"What the... hell..." Dean mumbled distractedly.

"What the hell?" Chuck scoffed, "You mean: _what_ hell? And: _what_ heaven? _What_ earth, for that matter? What _v_ _eil_? _Wha_ _t freaking Purgatory?!_ "

"Chuck?" Dean said incredulously, "What are you doing here? What are _we_ doing here?"

Then it clicked. "Dean." Sam said to his brother, "I don't think we are in our universe any longer."

Dean stared at Sam open-mouthed for a short moment, face slack in confusion, before the same simple question spilled from his lips again: "What?"

"Your brother would be correct." Chuck told Dean as he eyed Sam frostily. "We are _not_ in your universe." Both brothers' eyes flicked up to the man at the other side of the table, and he held both for a moment. "Because _you_ destroyed it."

Dean felt his throat dry up instantly, making it hard to swallow. The Darkness. They'd set the Darkness free and it had destroyed the universe. He had _told_ Sam removing the mark was a bad idea, _Death_ had told Sam – but would it even have mattered if they'd have convinced him?

Sam had done nothing since they'd met in that abandoned bar, no ritual or incantation – whatever cure he and Cas had found in that cursed book, either Sam had not been the one performing it or everything had been set into motion long before his brother came in to talk him down.

Even if he’d killed Sammy and come along to wherever Death had deemed safe, the Darkness might still have been set free.

“Sammy, what did you do?” But Sam’s gaze was as hard and sharp as a steel blade, showing no regret despite his obvious nerves.

“Not knowingly.” Sam defended himself, maybe with more venom that was warranted since according to Chuck they just _had_ destroyed the world, but maybe Sam felt he’d been tricked into this and hell – he probably was right. The toughest thing was though, that it wouldn’t even be a first for his little brother.

Painfully reminded of how Sam unwittingly set Lucifer free, having been lied to and manipulated by both Heaven and Hell until the very end, Dean was quick to come to his brother's defense. “Sam may have been stupid with using the Book of the Damned and working with Rowena, and I’ll never forgive him involving Charlie into this shit, but no one told either of us anything about destroying the world. We didn’t even hear about the Darkness until after it was too late!”

Chuck groaned, the coldness in his eyes evaporating as he slouched back on his comfy seat. “I guess you’re right.” he conceded, “Especially since you had to summon Death yourself before he even told you that tiny bit of what was actually at stake. It seems I have mostly myself to blame, again...” His eyes tiredly drifted off to the side. “This was why the angels were supposed to be immortal, you know. I gave each of them a job to fulfill, just like Time and Death and Fate… Death told you about the Darkness, but not out of his own initiative, to the wrong people and too late…”

There were suddenly four more people standing in the bar: Cas, Crowley, Rowena and Death himself. It was Death that Chuck was currently looking at.

Death gave Chuck a haughty look, offended by the accusation. “I am not the Messenger. It is not my task to relay information.”

“It is not.” Chuck agreed. “That is why we are in this mess, isn’t it?”

“Back up a moment, here.” Dean said, stepping over his nerves and pulling the attention back to him and Sam again, heedless of the fact that he was a mere miserable human being surrounded by creatures and people far more powerful than himself, including the very personification of death. “Who are you, to begin with?” he pointed at Chuck. “You’re talking about the angels as if –”

“As if I created them?”

Dean went wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Sam was the one who first managed to get the words over his tongue. 

“You’re God?” From the corner of his eye Dean was aware that Cas had taken a step closer, a thousand emotions flitting over his face, until he settled on a look that could only be described as… 

Reverent.

“Him I am.” Chuck – God – confirmed with a smile, but then added hastily as Crowley took a few steps back and Castiel scrambled to get on his knees, “But please none of that bowing groveling stuff – I’m not here to pass judgment, and it makes me very uncomfortable.” He smiled at the assembled group with that unabashed humility that could only come from one truly confident in theirselves. “Just call me Chuck.”

Death, the only one unaffected by this revelation – most likely because he had known Chuck’s identity all along – raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Well, _Chuck_ , as we both agree that I am the Messenger as much as you are, perhaps you can find it within yourself to explain these pawns what is what for once.”

God actually looked a tad guilty at that. _Pawn_ as he was, Dean could see why: as little as Death cared, Sam and him had conversed with Death several times now and he’d invariably helped them at the times that the humans saw no other way forward. Meanwhile, God was AWOL, and not once had He deigned to help His children even as he claimed to view humanity as his most beloved creation. God was more than due to give them a few pointers for a change.

“As Death told you, the Darkness was there before I created the earth and all other planes and planets. She would prevent me from creation, therefore she needed to be out of the way before I could do my work. I created the first four beings and gave them great power for exactly this reason: only with all four Archangels at my side I could beat the Darkness and lock her away. Despite Michael being the strongest, Lucifer landed the final blow, and I was so proud of him I thought I could trust him best to carry the lock, to bear the Mark. He did, for billions upon billions of years, while I created galaxies, Leviathan, angels, organism, but I never noticed the Mark corrupting him, him drifting away from me, not until I finished humanity and Lucifer snapped. Lucifer rebelled, created Hell, created demons and passed on the Mark to Cain before Michael threw him in the Cage.”

“ _Galaxies_.” Dean heard a female voice scoff, and suddenly their was another entity he had never met before: a short woman with cocoa skin, round, warm features, flowing blue robes and long, black hair bound back into a braid. “Don’t act as if you ever really created anything other than this one earth. Any other stars or planets are merely decor.”

“Outer-space is decor.” Sam repeated, only slightly baffled. That explained why, in all their years, Sam and Dean had encountered every creature in Heaven, Hell and between but never seen any proof of aliens. And the fact that Sam wasn’t struck mute by the presence of God and Death and whoever this deity was and the fact that they had apparently just _destroyed the entire universe_ was a real testament to how much cosmic shit they’d already gone through. “So where are we now then? The behind the scenes?”

The blue-robed woman gave the younger Winchester a lop-sided smile. “You could say that, yeah. My preferred name is Giliga, by the way, you might understand me as the personification of time.”

“So this Darkness had to be imprisoned in order for creation to take place, and now that it is out again it destroyed creation, and we all got zapped to the behind the scenes of the universe.” Dean surmised. “And all of this because no one bothered to tell Sammy what just _might_ happen, did he remove the Mark of Cain?”

“No one told us about the Darkness, because the one tasked with that job is dead.” Castiel spoke with his low, gritty voice, his eyes beginning to fill with realization. It was through Death that Castiel had learned about the Darkness, but only after he had preformed the ritual. Just like it was through Death that he had learned about the Leviathan, but only after he’d swallowed them all. If the Messenger had still been alive, could Castiel’s mistakes have been prevented?

“So care to share with class who _was_ assigned with that task?” As Crowley would not even dare to look God, Death or Time in the eye, he was delighted with this opportunity Castiel had given him to safely snipe at someone.

Though he might be socially capable enough nowadays to acknowledge he was being sneered at by the King of Hell, Castiel really could not be bothered by his tone. 

“The Messenger of God is the Archangel Gabriel.” he answered instead.

Death nodded. “The four Archangels were tasked with guarding the Darkness and ensuring the continued existence of the universe. Michael was the Commander, to fight any and all threats to his father’s creation, Lucifer was the Keeper, to bear the Mark and keep away the Darkness, Raphael was the Anchor, to mend creation when it was damaged and safeguard reality and Gabriel was the Messenger, to send a warning at the right people at the right time whenever they were at the brink of doing something cosmically stupid. I ensured their immortality, on God’s request, to enable them to do their job, and that was the way we made sure this universe would never come to an end.”

“So how did Gabriel die?” Sam asked.

“As you might recall, Sam, Lucifer had _bound_ me. I regret to say that at the time he killed Gabriel I was powerless to save him. And as for Raphael…” Death glanced at Castiel, who cast his eyes down respectfully. To Dean’s utter astonishment, Death actually smirked with something akin to amusement at the upstart seraph who had killed the Anchor of Reality and dared to call himself God.

“When Castiel swallowed the souls of Purgatory he ravaged a plane of existence and damaged the very fabric of the cosmos, however, he was – and still is – a mere seraph who did not even know of the full consequences of his actions before it was too late. It was never his _duty_ to prevent any of that farce from happening. That _duty_ fell to Raphael.” As Death spoke, Castiel finally dared to glance up at the deity, who he had personally challenged and greatly offended, and then at his father, whose name he had cursed and blasphemed in the worst possible way.

“Raphael mistook his duty to safeguard the fabric of reality for safeguarding the fulfillment of his brother’s plan, and forced Castiel’s hand in damaging the very thing Raphael was supposed to protect. Then, deluded by an angel’s misplaced sense of pride, he devised to take all those souls for _himself_ when a demon presented him the opportunity. At that point, I really couldn’t be bothered anymore by the continued existence of an Archangel who’d forgone his usefulness, and neither by a promise I had made to a God who had abandoned his own creation.”

At that, Chuck actually flinched. “All Archangels have forsaken their duty.” Chuck confessed, “Michael was the first, Lucifer rebelled and created Hell, and Michael saw him as a threat and planned to kill him, regardless of what that would mean for Lucifer’s role as Keeper of the Darkness. That was why I and Death made it so that the bearer of the Mark cannot be killed but by another bearer of the Mark, and as extra protection against Michael I created a spell for Lucifer to bind Death if he needed to.” Death sent Chuck a _look_ – it was more dignified than a glare, and also more effective.

“But then Lucifer went, betrayed me and forsook his duty. Not because he held no love for humanity – you’ll have figured by now that Lucifer hardly was the only perpetrator of that crime – but because in proving to me the flaws of humanity he passed on the Mark to Cain, a mere human, who in no way should be expected to be able to take on that responsibility, and he once again endangered the world with the threat of the Darkness.”

“I would have killed him then,” God went on, “but I had already given him the spell so I was unable to, that’s why I built the Cage. I ordered Michael to throw Lucifer in as punishment, and a horrible war ensued, in which Gabriel gave up his own duty together with the rest of Heaven and fled to the earth. When Lucifer finally was locked up, the spell weakened, and Michael then knew he would be able to kill Lucifer if he had a second try. When my oldest son asked me to open the Cage for him, I decided to stop caring and I disappeared from Heaven.”

So it was true, God _had_ given up on his own creation, only it wasn’t humanity he’d been fed up with but the Archangels. It wasn’t like Dean really needed another reason to hate Michael but from the sound of it, the eldest Archangel was as much to blame for the state of the universe as the Devil himself.

No wonder Heaven often seemed more messed up than Hell.

“There are a lot of things I could have done differently, but the most important one is that this world was flawed by design. A world can be destroyed by a paradox, and by giving the Archangels free will yet expecting them to be eternally devoted to their duty – as Death and Time are by nature – I created a paradox from the very start.” Chuck sighed resignedly. “For their failings, I only have myself to blame.”

Time – or Giliga – crossed her arms. “I might not be the expert on this, but doesn’t ‘free will’ inherently mean that they bear responsibility for their actions? You may have enabled them to go astray, but their careless actions should first and foremost be blamed on _them_.”

Chuck looked up at her. “Is that why Michael and Lucifer are not here with us?”

Dean had expected Chuck to be managing this whole ‘out-of-space-and-time’ emergency meeting, but apparently – for what ever reason – Time called the shots.

“This turn, many beings will remember pieces of their possible futures; angels, demons, humans, maybe I’ll even create prophetic _bees_ , but Michael and Lucifer will not know of what comes.” Giliga replied imperiously, and fair enough. The Archangels had had the full playbook last time, and see how well that ended.

The silence that followed was abruptly broken by Rowena’s Scottish lilt. 

“So what happens now? If the world is destroyed, why are we still here?”

“What do you think, little witch?” Giliga replied, “Of all people, you should know.”

Rowena narrowed her eyes at the seemingly smaller woman. “What are you talking about?”

Giliga raised her eyebrows and tilted her chin, to be better able to look down onto the taller woman. “Do you truly not recognize the image I have taken? Nor my name?”

It took Rowena all of two seconds before she gasped. “You! I know you, you are Giliga-Mehash! The mother of time-travel, you appeared five thousand years ago with all kinds of future magic and you are still supposedly one of the most advanced and powerful witches to this day!”

“ _Supposedly?_ ” Giliga enquired curiously.

“Five thousand year old legends are not exactly reliable sources, my dear. Your existence is debated.”

Giliga shrugged. “Well, I am not actually her in any case. However, she is a good reflection of my nature. In her timeline, she encountered a fate she found inconceivable, one that let to the extinction of humankind, and there were no more option to avert that end. Thus, she traveled back in time, thousands of years, and changed the world so that that future would never be possible again.”

Dean remembered a weird dream he had years ago, of Balthazar unsinking the Titanic because he disliked the movie, and then sinking it again because Fate is a bitch. “You can’t make changes in the past that influence the present.” he pointed out, “That goes against destiny.”

It was just as Giliga sent him a withering glare that he remembered he was talking to a core concept of the universe, instead of an actual person. “How _dare_ you question my authority on this! _I. Am. Time!_ ”

Sam apparently thought this was the ultimate moment to showcase his perfected little-brother sass to personified concepts. “Can’t really argue with that, Dean.”

Dean then showcased his own authorized I’m-not-done-with-you-you-little-brat glare.

Chuck snorted at the entire display. “Did you miss somewhere that me, Fate, Time, Death and all other concepts know each other, and that we all dislike the world ending? You do realize that when the Darkness destroys _everything_ , that they are all automatically destroyed as well? Fate and Destiny might not be here right now, but trust me, if Michael’s plan for the Apocalypse was not destiny, the end of everything at the hands of the Darkness isn’t either.”

“So we will time-travel.” Crowley concluded.

“Sort of,” Giliga said, “Some of those present will time-travel, others will only remember fragments of their future lives. Some will go back to over fifty years ago, some will travel merely a few hours. Other than the real Giliga, I care for the fate of humanity as little as Death does, as long as time continues to exist. I _will_ shake things up, and for once it _will_ be known something by all something went horribly wrong.” She gave all non-deities present a warning glare, power swirling in her warm, dark eyes and vibrating in the sound of her voice, that grew more god-like by the second. “Even as I believe you all bear responsibility for the end of the world, you did not _know_ what was at stake. However, this time you _will_ know, and you will know that the _end of the world_ should at _all costs be averted –_ ”

…

Dean opened his eyes, flew half upright in his bed as his hand grabbed the gun hidden under his sheets. As soon as he realized it was his dream that had awaken him instead of some direct threat, he pulled up his sleeve and studied the crook of his arm.

No Mark.

He exhaled slowly, willing himself to calm down. He remembered vividly the Mark of Cain burned onto his arm, the lust for blood and violence, him slowly turning into a demon as there was nothing he could do about it. But however real it had seemed, he was here, with his brother in a motel in Iowa, looking to kill some wendigos and save some people.


	2. An Angel From Heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warning: forced marriage/human trafficking, murder, Taliban,** ignorance of the writer of Islamic believes and Afghani language/culture/names. If you find anything incorrect about the latter, please message me, my main source has been: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_view_of_angels>

** An Angel From Heaven **

  


To a creature billions of years old, a sudden ten years of memory extra is nothing to blink at. Therefore, Castiel did not blink – not that he actually was able to, seeing as he had no vessel – but he saw Balthazar and Hester standing closest to him, watching the earth awaiting orders, and he knew he could no longer be among them.

Carefully cloaking his true form from both the eyes of his siblings and the mortal plane, he broke rank, disobeyed orders, and descended to Earth.

_ Cassy, brother, where have you gone? _

It was Balthazar. Castiel would have told him the truth, even if he had not known that the other angel would choose him over Heaven at a later point in time, were it not that the last time he had seen his closest friend Castiel stuck a blade through his back.  Not that knowledge of that betrayal would be reason for  Balthazar  to rat him out to Zachariah – even as he had every right to. No, Balthazar  would understand that  what happened in another time-line need not happen here and he would keep Castiel’s secrets far from prying eyes, or even come down to Earth along with him. 

Balthazar’s loyalty to his friend was unflinching,  and Castiel would not misuse it. Not again.

_ My friend, I am undeserving of your love. I will tell you nothing, so you cannot lie for me. Do not look for me and do not speak in my defense. _

_ Castiel, I cannot let you do this, for your own good. If you disappear, you will be cut off from Heaven! _

As he was no longer a seraph, that could prove to be a problem later on. He should make it a priority to find another source of power or somehow regain his seraphdom. Having been temporally human did not make it easier for him to accept his eventual loss of grace, on the contrary, knowing firsthand what it was like to be weak and unable to protect those he loved made him despise the prospect even more. He had to be careful with what he had, and do things the human way whenever possible – fortunately, he now had some experience with that.

At least he had back his wings, and it felt great to be whole again. If – when – he found Metatron, he would do whatever it took to prevent the angels from ever losing them again.

_ I have already disappeared,  _ he replied to Balthazar,  _no angel can find my grace, not even Michael; you would be unable to stop me now, so it would be pointless to try. I will take care of myself. Farewell, brother._

With that, he tuned out ‘angel radio’, as Dean had so aptly named their celestial means of communication.

First things first, he needed to find a vessel, so he could walk the earth  and change the course of time – for the better, hopefully .  It would probably be easiest for him to take James Novak again, but he was reluctant to do so,  knowing he would disrupt his life, destroy his family and that Jimmy would hate him for it  afterwards .

But whose life would he not disrupt? Castiel scoured the earth, looking for people who would welcome a long-term, disruptive angelic presence. People whose impending future was as black as ink, but who were still spirited enough to want to fight instead just give in and die. People without family and friends waiting home after Castiel had saved them. The most miserable and wretched of the earth, yet able enough to hold a higher being such as himself.

Deep in the mighty mountains of east Afghanistan, in a desolate bunker inhabited by the Taliban, he found eight young teenage girls locked in a concrete room, all dressed in elaborate, traditional wedding dresses. They all were afraid; some were angry, some were resigned; some were still praying fervently to be freed, some were just praying not to be hurt, and some had given up their faith in God.

A flash of anger came over Castiel. Why were they told not to intervene? Why wouldn't the higher angels let them help desperate, innocent souls like these, instead of watching the earth from a distance? Castiel could see that Michael believed killing Lucifer would bring on Paradise and eternal peace. He could see that the archangels viewed the collateral damage on mankind as a worthwhile sacrifice. He could see that in their eyes the suffering of the one was justified by the good of all. 

But what was the grand plan in letting these girls be ‘married’ to Jihadists?

There was one fourteen-year-old girl in particular that had pulled his attention to this place. She prayed to God – people of the Islamic faith never prayed to angels, they only prayed directly to God, but as they saw the angels as God’s instruments her prayers resounded well enough for Castiel to hear – she prayed to God in a way much like his own: desperate, angry, not understanding why here prayers were never answered while she was so faithful and not understanding why He had abandoned her. But most of all, she did not just pray for her own well-being, she prayed for all eight girls in the bunker, and all those who had come before her, and all those who would come after her.

He created the illusion of a voice that a human would understand, and spoke to her.

_ I am Castiel, I am an angel from Heaven, and I have heard your prayers. What is your name, little girl? _

She was struck silent for a moment, her heart skipping a beat. Maybe she had not truly believed anyone would answer – and Castiel really could not begrudge her that – or maybe she had not expected the celestial being to manifest as a voice in her head. To Castiel’s relief, a glimmer of hope sprang in the girl’s heart.

_ My name is Nazira Akhtar, I come from a village in Nuristan. My father had given information to the Americans, that’s why they killed him and my brother and took my sister and me from our home to be married to their men. Please, sir, we do not want to marry with these men, they murdered our families and took everything away from us; they are evil. _

Nazira. A name of Arabic origin, meaning ‘equal’. It was a fitting name, Castiel thought, as he would be equals with this girl.

_ I can help you,  _ he told the girl,  _but I cannot come to earth without a vessel. If you will allow me to use you as my visage, I can free you and the other girls and bring them to their families safe. However, I need you to invite me in._ He had initially resolved to tell the girl the whole truth from the very start, that he needed her to protect Sam and Dean and alter the future on a cosmic scale and that she might die at the hand of demons and that he would probably take at least an entire year in which she couldn’t see what was left of her family…  but he realized she probably would still say yes, as she had no other way out. She might not want all this, she might hate him for it, just as Jimmy did, but she would be afraid that if she did not agree he would leave her to her fate.  And  _that_ was something he would never do, could no longer do now he had seen how bad ly these girls needed him.

T o ask her to be his vessel for  an indefinite amount of time – when the alternative was to be ‘married’ to a possibly violent stranger thirty years her senior,  belonging to the group that had murdered her father – he would enforce himself upon her, and then he would be no better than the men that had taken her here.  He would ask her when she was free, so that  Nazira had a fair choice.

_ I have no family left, _ the girl responded bitterly,  _My mother died a long time ago, I have no home to return to. I will see the other girls safe, and then I want to see these men dead._

So the girl was not only angry, she had become vengeful. That was a sin, but Castiel could not fault her for it. The Jihadists had slaughtered her family, done who knows what to the other girls, they had probably destroyed her entire village, and corrupted her entire country. Nazira deserved revenge. She deserved justice.

_ I can give that to you. _

She clamped her jaw tight in cold rage and steely determination, a gesture shockingly like Sam. She was only a fourteen-year-old girl, but already her eyes had that look that went far beyond her years.

She was no hunter, but she had seen plenty of war, and trauma, and pain.

_ Alright then, use me as your vessel. _

Her soul opened, flaring bright and beautiful like a blooming rose. Castiel shifted the tendrils – rays – of his grace tentatively forward, reading the human essence, reading pain and hope and love. He wove his cool blue grace through her warm red-pink soul, anchored himself in it, and the soul took him willingly, accepted him, and it – she, Nazira – shone impossibly bright as she pulled the rest of the angel in.

Every vessel was unique in their interaction with the possessing angel. There were many factors that played a role: the respective strength of the soul and the angel, what the angel did to either comfort or dominate the soul, the soul’s subconscious, their purity, their memories and their state of mind as they let the angel in.

As any true vessel, Jimmy’s soul was very powerful and could hold Castiel easily. If he’d put his mind to it, Jimmy could have pushed Castiel back for a few minutes at the time and regained control over his body – like Sam had done to Lucifer when he jumped into the Cage. Yet he never had, Dean had even relayed to Castiel at one time that Jimmy had described his presence as ‘being chained to a comet’. Castiel had later deduced that Jimmy had been so powerless against him because he _believed_ himself to be powerless, and Castiel had never done anything to negate that feeling. In fact, when he first entered his vessel he’d barely even noticed Jimmy was there, and soon the angel had forgotten about his host’s soul entirely.

Where Jimmy had submitted himself entirely to a higher power, Nazira had a clear goal in mind and embraced his grace eagerly so that Castiel could help her, almost fusing herself with the angel. She showed him their faces: a distant memory of her mother in the golden rays of the sun, her father, strict and harsh to her in public, but comforting and kind within the privacy of their home, her older brother, baring an air of superiority and overprotectiveness that she fiercely rebelled against but that she secretly knew was born from a place of worry, her older sister, smarter than her but introverted and laid-back, willing to go along with their father’s plans to marry her off to the butcher’s son.

Castiel saw the face of the man who barked orders as they hauled the family out of their home, who called himself ‘mayor’. The man who leered at her more voluptuous sister as they were forced to their knees. The man who cut her brother and her father’s throats, letting them bleed out like cattle. The man who touched her as they waited for transport.

Nazira’s soul was weaker than Jimmy’s, and partly damaged on top of that, but Castiel was considerate to give her space in her own mind and an open way to communicate so that she may maintain a measure of control. After all, he intended for them to be equals.

_ First the girls, _ Castiel told Nazira, remembering the principles Dean had taught him about hunting, and Nazira agreed. Saving people, hunting thing s – always in that order.

Castiel rose, and turned to face the other girls to make sure she’d caught their eyes. Then she shone with an unnatural light, projecting the shadows of her wings on the bare gray concrete wall. The girls gasped in shock and awe and soon they were kowtowing before the angel, praying harder than ever before.

“My name is Castiel,” she spoke, “I am an angel from Heaven. Nazira prayed for all of your freedom and I am here to answer her prayers.”

She dimmed the light and turned to the girl kneeling closest to her. The girl flinched as she felt the angel’s intense gaze fall upon her, but Castiel did her best to be as non-threatening as possible.

“There is no more need to cast your eyes down and cower,” she intoned in a low and gentle voice, “I mean you no harm. Just tell me where you would feel most safe and I will bring you there.”

The girl tentatively looked up to the angel, not quite meeting her eyes but at least she wasn’t looking at the hard floor anymore. “I – I have an uncle who lives in Kabul. He would take me in, I would be safe there.”

Castiel nodded and gently lowered her hand onto the girl’s shoulder, ignoring another flinch. Then, they were gone.

Castiel flew each girl to where they would most feel safe, places within the country, places outside the country, two girls wanted to go to America and from the back of Castiel’s head Nazira told her she would like to go to America as well. After she had replaced the last girl, Castiel reappeared just behind one of the men on guard-duty and trust his blade through his back, making him light up from the inside out as if he’d swallowed a flickering lamp. The man’s partner swirled around, looking at Castiel with wide, alarmed eyes, but before he could make a sound Castiel had laid her fingers on his forehead and the second man fell like a brick.

_ That man was possessed by a demon, _ Castiel informed Nazira, nodding to the now lifeless form with a puncture wound to his chest where Castiel’s blade had come out of the flesh at the other side.  _You should watch out for them whenever I am not with you, they are spirits of pure evil and humans can normally not kill them. I, on the other hand, have fought and killed demons many times before – you may say that demons and angels are natural enemies._

_ So you are like dogs and cats then?  _ Nazira answered, and Castiel had to think for a moment before he recognized it as an expression – of two beings that naturally never got along. He smiled as he understood her reference.  _Yes, exactly like that._

There was another demon in the camp, and as Castiel had taken care of it Nazira recognized its face as one of the men who had mistreated her. This actually surprised Castiel little, as abducting a girl after her entire family had been murdered sounded exactly as the type of evil demons would be attracted to.

A demon’s life was less than worthless to Castiel. They were cruel, foul things of pure evil – their existence was merely extended torment for the human soul that they once were born from. As a warrior of God, it was Castiel’s duty to kill as many demons he could, because they were part of the hordes of Satan and Heaven and Hell were eternally in war. That’s how it’s always had been, and that’s how it always would be – not because Michael hated Lucifer, but because the role of warrior had been bestowed upon her by God. 

(Though if she came face to face with the Meg of this time, she was not sure what she would do.)

However, if it came to human life or an angelic life, her ideas changed a lot over the future-past ten years – more than she had ever thought an immortal being could change in such a short time, and certainly more than she had ever changed since the day of her creation. She was not certain if it was all Dean Winchester’s influence or that she had always been destined to walk this path of rebellion – she recalled Naomi’s reproaches: _have you any idea how often you needed to be reprogrammed –_ but after she’d pulled him out of the bowels of Hell, her ideas of right and wrong…

They had become human.

Angels saw themselves – they _were_ – far superior beings, compared to the humans that were flawed and weak. To them, a loss of human lives mattered very little; they saw the broader picture, it was for the greater good. Nonetheless, this was not only a matter of superiority – despite how it often may seem that way from a human perspective. It was not, because the angels viewed their own lives the same way.

They were the servants of God. And in the face of God’s plan, individual lives meant nothing. But what none of them had known, was that God did not have a plan.

Castiel had suspected this before, but she had not been sure until she, Crowley and Rowena had accidentally ended the world. God had never meant for this to happen –  _ faulty by design _ – but still it had, because he had let Lucifer kill Gabriel and left the world without the angel of Revelation. 

Then they had ended the world, because of a _miscommunication_.

In the future-past ten years, Castiel had learned to follow her own moral compass, and had learned that the only thing that mattered was life, creation, in any shape or form.  Life, individuals,  _ they _ were sacred. All else really was nothing but a means to an end.


	3. No One’s Fault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s02e01

**No One’s Fault**

 

The past few months Dean had been having weird, too vivid dreams – of which he more often than not only remembered the tail-end, before it disappeared from his mind again entirely. He didn’t think about it, like Sammy would – Sammy had visions of the future and analyzed the shit out of them, but that was just not Dean’s type of shtick. He was no psychic, no way he was involved in the hoodoo-voo-doo side of things. He vetted and killed monsters, shooting or stabbing them down with the right type of metal or salting and burning their corpse – he was a hunter, one of the best in the field, and he did things the way his father had taught him to. Therefore, he just never stood still to even consider what he had been seeing when he had his eyes closed.

Except in moments like this; when he got this strange sense of déjà vu of having encountered a situation in a dream before, of knowing _exactly_ what was going to happen next. It was just, as they stepped into the apartment and spotted their father bound to the bed, Dean remembered seeing yellow eyes in his Dad’s face, and the vision worried him enough that Sam raised his eye-brows as Dean soaked their father in holy water as soon as the demons had disappeared.

Dean was a tiny bit surprised when John came up clean, but it proved his premonition to be worthless, so he quickly forgot about it again.

Until John was standing in front of him, hand raised as Dean found himself pressed against the wall from all sides by an invisible force; Dean’s guts slowly being ripped apart from the inside out and making Dean choke pitifully on his own blood. John’s eyes were yellow. Maybe Dean would have seen this coming if he had remembered the whole dream instead of just the rear end.

He did not die, however: Sam shot John in the leg and the demon fled. Dean tried to tell them about his vision as they hauled his ass back to the Impala, but he must’ve sounded too slurred to make any sense as Sam only sussed him before shoving him into the backseat. After that he fell into a shallow sleep.

As the truck hit their car, he had barely opened his eyes on reflex before they drooped closed again.

…

The constant beep of the monitor was the clearest sign that his brother was still alive. That in itself was a clear sign that since they’d obtained the Colt, things had gone horribly south.

Sam kept reminding himself that no one could have prevented Dean lying here on this bed. That there was no one to blame but the demons that did this. He needed to, to answer the one question circling through his mind without going mad.

Could he have foreseen this? He saw – and saved – that family in Iowa. He saw and failed to save Jessica from burning on the ceiling. He saw that freaking dead tree outside their old family home where it happened, and as far as he was aware, Yellow-Eyes had been nowhere near Lawrence the time Sam and Dean were there.

So why hadn’t he foreseen the yellow-eyed demon possessing their father, almost killing Dean? Could he have seen all of this coming, had he trained his abilities a bit more, like Max had?

Or would he have become just another monster to be put down? Sam darkly wondered what outcome John would have preferred.

His father lay in a room at the end of the hall, bed-ridden but furthermore well enough to still be plotting his revenge on Yellow-Eyes. John had asked him to go by Bobby’s, who now had taken care of the Impala and all their stuff inside, to get the Colt and a few more ingredients to ‘ward off demons’. Turned out however, he wasn’t planning on warding them off as much as he was planning on summoning one so he could shoot it in the face. Sam had yelled at him, John had enthusiastically yelled back; because without Dean among them to play the mediator, that was the only way Sam and John seemed able to interact with each other.

But Dean had always hated when Sam and their father fought. That was why, when their fight was abruptly interrupted by the water glass at John’s bedside being thrown on the floor, Sam suspected they had a wraithy visitor, and there was only one person who that could be.

Sam looked down at his comatose brother, tubes sticking out of his arm and nose, chest barely rising, only the constant beep ensuring him Dean was _not_ in fact giving up this very instant.

“Hey.” he greeted his brother, way beyond caring how this may look to the hospital staff passing the door. “I think maybe you're around,” he admitted, hoping that he was right, fearing that no one was around to tease him for his awkward confession anyway, “and if you are, don't make fun of me for this, but um – well, there's one way we can talk.”

He reached into the brown paper bag and pulled out the Ouija board he’d just bought at the local games store. He lowered himself to the floor and placed the board in front of him, holding the pointer with two fingers of each hand.

“Dean? Are you there?”

He held his breath for one agonizing second. And then another. And then another…

He knew how difficult it could be for spirits to communicate with the living so he’d resolved himself to keep his scepsis at bay and be patient. Therefore he stubbornly stayed hopeful as ten seconds slowly bled into twenty.

Then, at second twenty-three, Sam heart leapt in his throat as the pointer slowly began moving.

YES

Sam burst out babbling, “Dean, it’s so good to hear from you, man. It hasn’t –”

The pointer had already started sliding over the board; Dean didn’t seem to have time for chit-chat. Sam frowned in worry as he saw the word form beneath his fingers.

D – A – D

“Dad?” Sam asked. What the hell had their father done? Had he already summoned the demon? Hell, he shouldn’t have let him alone with the Colt and all those ingredients – but as he himself had told his father a few mere hours ago: saving Dean took priority. “What is with Dad, Dean?”

D – E – the pointer was slowly going towards the M…

“Demon? Dean, has Dad summoned the demon?!”

The pointer suddenly changed direction midway to the M.

A – L

“Deal? Dad…” Sam’s eyes widened as the pieces clicked in his head. _I am doing this for Dean._ “Dad is gonna make a deal with the demon?!”

YES

“We gotta stop him! We…”

B – O – I – L – E

“Boi – boil… boiler? Dad is in the boiler room?”

YES

Sam barely has the mind to pick up the board before storming down the hall to find their father.

…

Blood of the summoner. John watches the quick drops fall into the bowl, coloring the sand dark red.

He took out the piece of cloth from his duffel bag and wound it around his hand to stem the bleeding.

At that moment the door flew open and John whirled around to face the entrance, his good hand on the Colt ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

It took John a second to recognize the looming, gangly shadow as his youngest.

“What the actual hell, Dad! You were gonna make deal with the demon that killed Mom?! After all everything you said about hunting the son of a bitch down, after all those years… You’re gonna sell your soul to Yellow-Eyes?!”

His initial shock at seeing Sam down here – how did he even know John was planning to make a deal? – was quickly replaced by anger at the insinuation that John was giving up. “As I told you, I’m gonna save Dean.”

“And _you_ will die instead!” Sam pointed out furiously. “That’s not any better – it’s worse, because you are going to Hell! And have you even thought that me and Dean would not want you to die?! You are our father, and you’re just gonna doom yourself behind our backs?!”

“Do you actually think I would even _consider_ this if it wasn’t the only way that Dean gets to live?!” John’s voice was low but full of venom and his eyes narrow in absolute fury. “Of course I don’t want to do this, but this is the only way it’s gonna be over. It is me that the demon wants, it began with me and it will and with me.”

“Do you really think that?” Sam was seething, but at those words there also was a note of genuine surprise in his tone.

“That is why I tried to stay far away from you. Maybe you were right, maybe I was obsessed by my revenge for Mary, but I’m putting this right, now. I dragged you two into this mess, and I’ll be the one to drag you out.”

“Dad, the demon said he had plans for me.”

John’s jaw clenched as he discarded his doubts and he tilted his chin slightly up as if daring Sam to challenge his stony resolve. Unbeknownst to the both of them, it was quite a typical expression that only Sam had copied of his father.

“The demon was only trying to create doubt in you. You do not believe it, do you?”

Sam swallowed back unmanly tears he would never let his father see. “I’m not sure if I can believe _you_.”

His son’s soft spoken words cut in John’s heart, but the organ was already so tattered John barely noticed the additional damage. “No matter if you do or not, you need to get away from here so I can save Dean.”

Sam eyes widened with urgency, as he’d almost believed he’d talked John out of it. “No, Dad, no! I won’t let you!”

“Sam, get away!” John bellowed angrily.

“No –”

“ _That’s an order!_ ” Behind John, the bowl sprang into a thousand pieces, as if John’s thundering tone had shattered it.

Both father and son stared at the black, broken earthen-work. John glanced inconspicuously at his son. He knew the yellow-eyed demon had done something to Sam to make him… inhuman – this couldn’t have been Sam, could it?

Dread coiled in John’s stomach as suddenly hope and realization twinkled in Sam’s eye, as if his son knew exactly what was going on. He hastily crouched down to the concrete floor, his freakishly long legs folding beneath him, and only now John noticed the board Sam had been holding during their argument.

John frowned in confusion. “Is that an Ouija board? Sam, what do you think you are you doing?”

“Yeah, I almost forgot to tell you, Dad,” Sam began snidely, and for once John bit back his angry response, “Dean is a spirit, and I managed to talk to him through the Ouija board. _He_ in fact told me you were about to make a deal. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t even have known before it was too late.” He poised his long fingers over the wooden triangle. “Dean, are you here? Can you talk to us?”

John knew he was being an insensitive ass, but his worry over Sam’s connection with the supernatural he couldn’t put down. “How are you sure it’s him?”

“Shut up.” Sam snapped, and John couldn’t really argue the sentiment.

John didn’t know what to feel as he saw the pointer gliding over the board.

YES

“Dean…” Sam teared up, and John knew it was his turn to be a good father for once and take charge.

“Dean,” John spoke to the empty air, if only to take some of the load off Sam, as he was not certain yet the spirit was indeed his eldest son. “Were you the one who broke the bowl?” Had the spirit ruined his ritual, or was it something even more malicious?

The pointer moved across the board. “Can’t let you.” Sam read. “He couldn’t let you make the deal. He doesn’t want you to die for him, Dad.”

Dean had always been incredibly selfless, even before Sam had been born. The answer didn’t surprise John.

“Do you – do you know of a way to heal you?” Sam asked hopefully after a second. John stared at the Ouija board, almost as reverently as Sam did. Was there another way to get his son back?

For an awful ten seconds the pointer was still, and John had to suppress the urge to kick that damned board out of Sam’s hands for having given him false hope. Then the pointer was moving…

C – A – S

“Cas? What does that mean?” John demanded, he wasn’t sure of whom. The board stayed still.

“Dean, are you still here? What do you mean by ‘cas’?” Sam asked the air, but still they got no response.

After half a minute of breath-taking uncertainty, Sam drew his conclusions in a tight voice. “Dean is not here, we should check on… we should check on him in the bed.”

As his bowl was destroyed and the ingredients were spilled, John decided he might just as well come along and pray that whatever – or _wh_ _o_ ever – this ‘cas’ was, it was powerful enough and willing enough to bring Dean back from the brink.

Gathering respectively the board and the left-over summoning materials, Sam and John hurried upstairs to check on unresponsive Dean in the hospital room, ignoring the suspicious looks the attracted from the hospital staff.

Finally they reached Dean’s bedside, relieved by the constant beep coming from the monitor. In their absence he hadn’t died at least.

Nothing seemed to have changed, but they waited until the doctor came to do her half-hourly check-up. It turned out to be worth the wait, as when the doctor analyzed her readings her eyes went wide as saucers.

“Good news I hope?” John asked tentatively.

The doctor let out an amazed laugh. “More than good news, Mr. McGillicuddy. I can't explain it, but he’s going to be alright! The edema's vanished, the internal contusions are healed. His vitals are good. He’s got some kind of angel watching over him.”

Dean was going to be alright. Dean was going to be alright! John wasn’t sure if he had some kind of angel watching over him, some kind of witch, some kind of ghost or some kind of demon even – but Dean…

Dean was going to be alright.

…

Dean did not remember being a spirit, no matter how often Sam and John asked him of what had seen. Apparently, Sam had been able to communicate with Dean when he was out of his body through an Ouija board and Dean had warned him that Dad was going to make a demon deal. Only how could he have known Dad would make a deal, and not just try to shoot the demon between the eyes?

Then there was those three letters: C – A – S, the answer to whatever it was that had saved him. Dean guessed he must’ve have thought that he would remember this time what happened, or he reckoned he wouldn’t have been so vague. If that thing communicating with Sam had even been him in the first place.

Confronted with the harsh reality of in how much danger they actually were – and possibly because after his mysterious rescue John did not trust Dean not to suddenly fall down dead – the three of them decided to stick together indefinitely. Or at least until the demon was dead, as they’d agreed on before, but who knew how long it would be before they got their next shot… which also would be their last, as there was only one bullet left in the Colt. So they had to be prepared. They had to make it count.

The car was far beyond salvageable, or at least, that was what anyone would have thought except Dean. With the car wrecked and no better place to fix it than Singer’s Salvage, they were pretty much stuck at Bobby’s house, much too both Bobby’s and John’s chagrin. When they were younger, John had often parked his children with the older hunter as he went after something he deemed to dangerous for Sam and Dean to come along, so much so that too often Bobby had been more of a father figure than John had been. Together with Bobby’s gruff, dogged nature and John’s authoritarian ways, it was needless to say that there always was a constant tension whenever those two were in the same room. With Dean working on the Impala and Sam having his own bag of issues with John, there was no one there to smooth things over so they decided to just keep out of each others way as much as possible, John taking up residence in a large, mostly whole van instead. Separately from each other, they used Bobby’s extensive library to research out of body experiences, miracle healings and any supernatural creature or phenomenon that could be placed under the nomer ‘Cas’.

In the uneasy moments that they were forced to share one space, Dean sometimes spotted John glancing at Sam with a type of worry he really did not like. As no one had told their father yet about Sam’s other powers, it must have been because of the premonitions and his connection to the being that saved Dean – and possibly John too, now Dean thought about it. If he were honest with himself, that was the main reason he had not told John of his own premonitions yet – of how he had seen Yellow-Eyes wearing John’s flesh in a dream before it happened, of how he suspected he still had much more buried deep in his subconscious, forgotten for now, but not unseen. Like those hours between the crash and his waking up.

Which was just the pinnacle of irony. He did not know why he thought that, but he did.


End file.
